Jesus Saves Lot and His Daughters
Now when the angels brought pious Lot to the edge of the city, they said to him, “Escape for your life, and do not look back or stop anywhere in the region. Escape to the hills, lest you be consumed” [Genesis 19:17]. Everyone who would escape impending calamity with life and limb, goods and honor, should contemplate these words. Oh Lord Jesus, help me to deliver my soul, to preserve my soul’s salvation, and not to let myself be blinded by the wicked example of this Sodomitic* world. Rather, though all the world be godless, let me consider the salvation of my soul and not end up in peril of it by disobedience. Help me also that, when I have begun to serve You, I may not look back at whatever I held dear in the world but straight ahead at my calling in life and seek what pleases You. The children of the world always think it good to dwell in Sodom, in the world, but it is far better to dwell in heaven, where there “are many dwellings” [John 14:2] which You, Lord Jesus, have built for us with Your precious merit. Grant grace that I may not stop on Your way (for he who stands idle for You toils for the devil, and the devil pays his laborers with a noose), but grant me to walk step by step in Your service from one virtue to the next.
Oh, draw my heart up to You, to the high mountain of heaven, that I too may lift up my eyes to the hills, from whence help comes to me [Ps. 121:1], that I may seek the things that are above [Col. 3:1]; that, though in my body I am on earth, my heart, mind, and thoughts may yet be in heaven until at last I am wholly brought, soul and body, out of the Sodomitic world to You, and escape all wretchedness. Lot was delivered because the Lord spared him. Oh, spare me too, dear Lord Jesus Christ. If You should mark my iniquities, I could not stand [Ps. 130:3]; yet spare me for the sake of Your highly renowned and faithful heart.
Herberger, Valerius The Great Works of God … Chapters 16-50 43-44
* Contemporary definitions of “Sodomitic” limit it to sexual activity. That is not how Herberger uses it. For him it is a world-view, and the actions that spring from it, that exclude the true God. Such words as “unrighteous,” “immoral,” “godless,” “self-centered,” “worldly,” etc., would be synonyms. This includes sexual sin, but by no means excludes greed, envy, hatred, bigotry, murder, theft, etc.